If you have a webhosting you have to have basic know how of tips and tricks you can do with htaccess. So here is a list of basic actions that can be done via htaccess and how to use them.

Disable Directory Browsing

Options All -Indexes

Enable Directory Browsing
In the remote case that you want to list your directories:

Options +Indexes
## block a few types of files from showing
IndexIgnore *.wmv *.mp4 *.avi

Customize Error Messages

ErrorDocument 403 /403.html
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html
ErrorDocument 500 /500.html

Change Default Page

The pages are searched in the order specified.

DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php fallback.html

Forward all http://www.techmonks.net to http://techmonks.net (Good for removing duplicate links)

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.techmonks\.net$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://techmonks.net/$1 [R=301,L]

Redirect to a new URL

Redirect oldlocation.html http://www.techmonks.net/index.html
Redirect /subdamain http://www.techmonks.net/navin

Disable access to images from other websites (Hot linking)

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?techmonks.net/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg)$ - [F]

You can also replace it with a static/warning image:

RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg)$ http://techmonks.net/warningmessage.jpg [R,L]

Allow only local users

order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from 192.168.0.0/24 (replace with local subnet)

Block Users from accessing the site

order deny,allow
deny from 1.1.1.1 (deny subnet / ip)
deny from .blockeddomain.com
allow from all

Stop .htaccess (a file) from being viewed

order allow,deny
deny from all

Grant CGI (perl) Access in a directory

Options +ExecCGI
AddHandler cgi-script cgi pl

Enable Gzip compression

# BEGIN GZIP

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/xml text/css application/x-javascript application/javascript

# END GZIP

Now that you just got yourself one of the best smartphones around the Samsung Galaxy SIII it is time to start installing apps on it. Galaxy S III already comes pre-installed with apps like. Google Search, Maps, Navigator, Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk, Picasa integration, Swype, Dropbox etc. Here I have jotted down some more essential free apps for Galaxy SIII to get the most out of your phone. Though this list is focused on S3 most of these apps are good for any android device.

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First a short introduction on Instagram, it is an iphone app for taking pictures, adding filters to make them look retro, and then for sharing them with sites like Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, and Facebook, more importantly, it’s a simple social network of other people’s photos. You can “like” or comment on the photos, and see what’s new. It’s easy and doesn’t take much time or effort. This is one of the reasons it has become so popular so quickly.

What is also good to know is that Instagram has recently released an API which the user’s can use to fetch pictures that users upload to the website. In this article I want to discuss that API and how to use it to make the most out of it.

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According to the latest update from Google it says that it has made a considerable change in its algorithm to improve the ranks of the high quality websites and lower the visibility of the low quality sites. While this is mainly based to lower the ranking of the sites which are populating 100′s of articles daily based on the list of most searched terms; this will impact the ranking of quite a few sites and people will be looking into understanding the changes to get their articles on top again! happy SEO-ing everyone. Most likely it only helps people using proper SEO techniques to get higher up in Google more easily. If you want to read up the news articles here are the links from Guardian and from new york times. Happy SEOing!

Hi,

If you are frustrated by Linux and your college’s network, which is windows based or sysadmins can help you with windows only, and sysadmins for a request call, replies as “use Windows”. If you are in a university then I am sure they use that damned( or good) software called as proxy (squid proxy to be specific). And you are a linux newbie then, here are some quick tips for you.

TIP # 1

You want your download manager (wget), updates by apt or aptitude to use a http proxy, you can use the following commands to export proxy to your environment

export http_proxy=http://user:password@proxy:port/

or

export http_proxy=http://proxy:port/

Things to note here are

• Type the command as it is, don’t leave unnecessary spaces.
• Username/password is the username and password you use to access the proxy, that is the same password which you type when you access internet using a web-browser. If you don’t use one, then use the second version of the command
• Proxy and port are the values that are the same as used in your web-browser, or you can ask check them out with your sysadmin, or anyone who has a working internet on the same network.

After you do this you can use apt or aptitude and it will use the http proxy you specified!

TIP # 2
For GNOME users : GNOME allows users to specify a proxy from a GUI, which you can find in

Preferences –> Network Proxy

It also allows you to specify username/password, by clicking on “Details”

TIP # 3
Using socks proxy with evolution (the e-mail client)You need a package named tsocks

sudo apt-get install tsocks

for Ubuntu users

or you can download it from here, http://tsocks.sourceforge.net

then just type

tsocks evolution

you might want to read the man page for configurations too.

So, that’s it. I hope it makes your life a little easier with Linux on network. Tell us about your experiences of using Linux behind proxies. Remember google search is your best resource!

continuing from the last post. If your network is all Windows based, then using the tricks mentioned in the previous post are of no use to you. That’s because Windows servers use NTLM authentication. It’s different from normal authentication, in the sense of a user, you won’t be able to use Linux happily on a network with that kind of authentication scheme. You need to keep an eye on how to use this tip to your benefits.

You need this to create your very own NTLM workaround proxy server. It’s called NTLM Authorization Proxy Server.

Setps for those-who-don’t-know-and-want-to-learn

1. Download the NTLMAPS script.
2. Download python.
3. Unzip the NTLMAPS zip file and install python.
4. Configure(edit and save) the server.cfg (read below).
5. Double click on runserver.bat

voila, you see a console!

Configuring the server.cfg

You will need to modify these variables in the config file named “server.cfg” according to your network needs

LISTEN_PORT:5865

PARENT_PROXY:your_parentproxy

PARENT_PROXY_PORT:8080

NT_DOMAIN:your_domain

USER:username_to_use

PASSWORD:your_nt_password

And these variables if you need, normally they won’t require a change, but you might need to.

LM_PART:1

NT_PART:0

SCR_DEBUG:0

ALLOW_EXTERNAL_CLIENTS:0

FRIENDLY_IPS:

For me the configuration looks like

LISTEN_PORT:4000

PARENT_PROXY:10.100.56.45

PARENT_PROXY_PORT:3128

NT_DOMAIN:your_domain

USER:200301001

PASSWORD:

LM_PART:1

NT_PART:0

SCR_DEBUG:0

ALLOW_EXTERNAL_CLIENTS:0

FRIENDLY_IPS:10.100.90.90 10.100.96.69

Note, if you don’t fill in the password, it will automatically ask when you run the “runserver.bat” file.

So now it’s all done, tell me if you use it successfully, or failed at it miserably!

Hi,

If you are frustrated by Linux and your college’s network, which is windows based or sysadmins can help you with windows only, and sysadmins for a request call, replies as “use Windows”. If you are in a university then I am sure they use that damned( or good) software called as proxy (squid proxy to be specific). And you are a linux newbie then, here are some quick tips for you.

TIP # 1

You want your download manager (wget), updates by apt or aptitude to use a http proxy, you can type

export http_proxy=http://user:password@proxy:port/

or

export http_proxy=http://proxy:port/

Things to note here are

• Type the command as it is, don’t leave unnecessary spaces.
• Username/password is the username and password you use to access the proxy, that is the same password which you type when you access internet using a web-browser. If you don’t use one, then use the second version of the command
• Proxy and port are the values that are the same as used in your web-browser, or you can ask check them out with your sysadmin, or anyone who has a working internet on the same network.

After you do this you can use apt or aptitude and it will use the http proxy you specified!

Preferences –> Network Proxy

It also allows you to specify username/password, by clicking on “Details”

sudo apt-get install tsocks

for Ubuntu users

or you can download it from here, http://tsocks.sourceforge.net

then just type

tsocks evolution

you might want to read the man page for configurations too.

So, that’s it. I hope it makes your life a little easier with Linux on network. Tell us about your experiences of using Linux behind proxies. Remember google search is your best resource!

DarK is a Linux newbie who is frustrated by network admins across India. His recent project is installing Linux-from-scratch. He is the How to’s master here!

Here is the link.

PS: IMAP access is available on iPhone too!

Enjoy!